security blankets
by fen-san
Summary: Farfarello likes to watch his teammates, starting with Crawford, then Nagi and Schuldich.
1. Intrepid Leader

Disclaimer – yeah yeah, none of this is my intellectual property short of the plot such as it is and the 'insights' into the characters.

Today it was Nagi who unlocked my room and undid the straitjacket before he stumbled to the bathroom for his morning shower. I got to the kitchen for a bowl of semi-liquid milky porridge and watched our intrepid leader. In my more lucid moments I watch Bradley Crawford. It's the small things that are the most intriguing about him. He comes across as a callous manipulative and calculating bastard. He is, too, but not entirely.

He sits at the kitchen table, cradling his plain coffee mug in the palms of his hands and staring at the table surface. After a while I noticed that he loves to hold things when relaxing, usually a mug of coffee, a newspaper or his pocket square. Warmth and softness appeal to him it seems, although he'd die rather than admit it.

It occurs to me that since Crawford runs on discipline and keeps we three at a distance he needs some sort of human surrogate. He has a warm mug instead of a loving embrace, CDs and books instead of fulfilling conversation. A thing is reassurance, a comforting presence that demands nothing in return, holds no secrets over your head as blackmail and is not an emotional weak spot like a human is. No enemy, no matter how deranged would try taking Crawford's mug hostage.

Sometimes it's very easy to imagine child Brad and wonder exactly what it was that happened to leave him so damaged. What did Estet do to break him?

-He'd kill you if he could hear this train of thought.-

-True.- I reply softly to a real voice in my head. –But then, the truth hurts. – Schu laughed softly within my head, silently agreeing.


	2. Nagi

Author's note – Still not my property… but thanks Yami Maleci for your kind review. Here's Nagi for your reading pleasure.

The kid spares me a glance as he traipses through the sitting-room to dump his stuff after school and seems unaffected by the way I track his movement with my single eye. Which is a shame, I know my habit of watching people like that is creepy and I like it that way. He returns with food and some homework. He switches on the television and changes the station away from the shojo anime they were showing to something sedate. He watched old people television when he is doing his homework. Mind you, his choice still leans to the soothing even when watching for his own pleasure.

Crawford comes in and comments on a few things. Nagi nods and makes a note of them. He's a good boy, always obeying Crawford, strange that a little control freak like him should be so… almost passive when it comes to the orders of our leader. He's still a child where it counts, so the uniform is like an armour, that hard, dead stare warns off the unwary and if all else fails the telekinesis swats his irritating flies without him touching anything. He remains unstained. But not where it counts.

He has killed, not as many as we older three, but enough that the whole company of Heaven weeps for his lost innocence. I chuckles softly at that thought and he looks up, those wary dark eyes fixing on me with the confidence of one who can put me on the floor without breaking a sweat. He does not fear much outside of himself, but the fear inside him makes up for that deficit. He fears the nightmares of his past, he fears getting too close, but most of all he fears his own emotions. He got a bit of a shock at what happened last time he got really angry.

I thought it was quite funny, it reminded me of that movie, Blues Brothers the way the building fell and we all stood up from the ruins. Pity the noisy little blue one had survived. Now he tries to keep an even tighter rein on himself, he even fears love these days….

I wait for the moment he breaks down completely and everything I know that happens in that head is suddenly released in one immense orgy of violence. I think it should be like an apocalypse and I shall stand and watch his masterwork as it unfolds….


	3. Schuldich

A/N – and here's our beloved Schuldich, just to complete the set.

I've been such a good little psycho all day I have not been fastened into my straitjacket for the night. A rare treat, even if they have managed to hide my knives away from me. I prowl around the unlit place grinning as I think how easy it would be to stop these three lives. Esset's habit of housing teams together does not take my own proclivities into account. But then I tried to kill them all once and it ended quite badly.

Instead I content myself with prowling silently about the joint peering in at the others. Crawford and Nagi are boring when the sleep, but Schuldich sleeps with the curtains open and is dead. The bright plumage shines in the moonlight and that animated face and body are still, like a doll packed up in a box. Now he is the puppet and I can lift his limbs and watch them flop down. He took diazepam tonight so I am safe from him waking. It makes me giggle quietly seeing how the mighty, arrogant mind-twister is so weak and vulnerable. His strength is his weakness and he refuses to embrace and become what he truly is. It is a shame that he wastes his potential, wrecking silly little marriages and short-changing people in the shops. He is afraid of who they are, but he denies who he is.

I frown at the paradox my little doll presents. He is neither then? He wants this power and his instinct is to sample and become other people, but his training tells him otherwise. He seems full of bravura but will not step up to the challenge his own self issues him. He does not join the battle with himself, instead avoiding it elegantly, like his fighting. His speed and strength allow him to dodge and duck so well and the gun he uses keeps himself clean. Even Crawford deigns to fight with his own two hands on occasion.

How can someone so aware of the mind be so ignorant of their own? His brashness, bright clothes, nasal, loud voice and constant need to scheme and be occupied are a cowardly retreat from himself. Sometimes I think even his assumed name is.

I smile and jump off the bed, to dive under it and lurk in shadow. I like these ones and somehow we all fit together to make a good working unit. It certainly beats being back at the nuthouse with nothing to do all day.


End file.
